Slicing. I love taking a sharp serrated knife and slicing things on the chopping board. I do not like the word chop, it sounds boring and stodgy and like it doesn’t have a mind of its own. I do like chopping onions really fine though, but I do not like the word as much. Now slice, on the other hand, sounds nice and smooth and I like the way it rolls off my tongue. One of my favourite things to do in the kitchen is thinly slicing onions and cabbage. And I love rolling up cabbage leaves and doing a chiffonade. I find it strangely meditative and fulfilling. Even though my mind wanders sometimes, as it often does, and I start thinking about various things.

It happened today as well as I watched the tightly rolled cabbage leaves unfurl into pretty ribbons once my knife was done with them. I thought about how it ended abruptly, without definition and design. One fine day just like that, poof, and it was gone. I thought about how I couldn’t remember the first time we said hello but the goodbye, which now decides to release it in my chiffonade haze, remains firmly entrenched in my mind.

Now when I look back, I realize that we had probably been trying to say goodbye for a long time. But like two ends of an elastic band, we’d spring back together just as soon as we let go. But I guess the defining moment for me was that day towards the end of March. It took the dead of the night and your flimsy excuses for the umpteenth time that finally did it. It was at 2:30 am that it finally dawned on me that our lives would just play out in an endless loop of the same moments if we had to stay together (while not really trying to be ‘together’). I felt the switch inside me flip (the one that has never failed) and I knew then that I had to get out. Even if it took longer to make a physical exit, it was in that instant that my caged mind just broke free.

Of course, there was the inevitable roller-coaster ride that followed. The two of us first trying to skirt the issue, and then you tried to talk about it while I pretended not to catch the bait. That was followed by loud sobs and cries (mine not yours) before we finally sat down and decided to face the elephant in the room. Accusations flew across, dodged by tacky self-defense tactics (by both of us), as we watched our entire relationship dissipate before our eyes. It felt good though, like a long overdue cleanse. If you really think about it, it was actually much like a chiffonade – tightly rolled up leaves unfurling into thin long strands as you slice into them. They take on a different shape and start to serve a different purpose once the knife is done with them. Like you and me and the ‘us’ that we spent years trying to deny. But exist it did, whether we like to admit it or not. What else can explain the way we said goodbye before I finally left? It was not what we wanted but it probably turned out just the way we first met. So instead of that tight embrace (you know the one I’m talking about) and those passionate kisses, it was the awkward half-hug that two people who don’t know each other too well tend to resort to in social situations. Well, I guess, we ended the same way we began.